Posted on 07/22/2013 9:47:12 AM PDT by Kaslin
The disgracefully slanted coverage of the trial of George Zimmerman is only the latest, prominent example of liberal media bias. Since the 2012 presidential election, America’s national media hasn’t let up. It’s pushing harder on its pro-liberal Democrat and anti-conservative Republican slant.
Consider Obamacare.
In recent days, organized labor turned harshly and vocally against the so called “Affordable Care Act.” Three leaders of America’s largest unions, including Jimmy Hoffa, wrote a jaw-dropping letter to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Excerpts of their arguments sound like a Republican opposition brief:
“When you and the President sought oursupport for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them. Sadly, that promise is under threat. Right now, unless you and the Obama Administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.”
“We have been strong supporters of you. In campaign after campaign we have put boots on the ground, gone door-to-door to get out the vote, run phone banks and raised money to secure this vision. Now this vision has come back to haunt us.”
“Time is running out: Congress wrote this law; we voted for you. We have a problem; you need to fix it. The unintended consequences of the ACA are severe. Perverse incentives are already creating nightmare scenarios.”
“The law creates an incentive for employers to keep employees’ work hours below 30 hours a week. Numerous employers have begun to cut workers’ hours to avoid this obligation, and many of them are doing so openly. The impact is two-fold: fewer hours means less pay while also losing our current health benefits”
“As you both know first-hand, our persuasive arguments have been disregarded and met with a stone wall by the White House and the pertinent agencies.”
“On behalf of the millions of working men and women we represent and the families they support, we can no longer stand silent in the face of elements of the Affordable Care Act that will destroy the very health and wellbeing of our members along with millions of other hardworking Americans”
Days later, the Laborers International Union of North America (“International of North America? Gee, do they consider themselves American? But I digress) followed up with a letter to President Obama, warning of “the destructive consequences” of Obamacare if it weren’t drastically modified.
Scathing criticisms of the president’s signature achievement from bulwarks of the liberal Democratic establishment should register high on America’s political Richter scale. Instead, they’re practically tree-fall in an empty forest, because the corrupt broadcast networks aren’t reporting them. Consider if America’s biggest business leaders had delivered comparable blasts at the economic policies of Presidents Bush, Bush, or Reagan. The network amplifiers would have blown their fuses, prolongedly.
The deception reaches deep into new media, as well. This weekend, AOL News informed its millions of viewers that Republicans are “still attacking Obamacare.” Yes, Republicans like Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters. The kids online don’t have a clue.
From Big Labor’s pains to the IRS’s depredations, the media con game shifts from silence to farce. Congressional hearings last week revealed the scheme to target conservative groups was directed out of the Office of the IRS Chief Counsel. The Chief Counsel is one of only two agency employees who are appointed by Barack Obama! That bombshell might do more damage than all the explosions in “White House Down,” Hollywood’s flop valentine to Obama.
But it’s not the story from our leading talking heads, who, if they deigned to cover the story at all, either mocked Republicans’ clumsy questioning, or gave heroic, spotlight treatment to Ranking Member and Court-Distractor Elijah Cummings’ idiotic queries whether any witness had discovered a murder weapon with the president’s fingerprints on it, or something like that.
The script is universal and firm: Play stories that help Democrats hard, thoroughly, repeatedly. Stories that help Republicans, if they can’t be ignored, should be delivered quietly and, especially if they hurt the president, for no more than two news cycles at most.
Thus, a recent study by Obama’s own Justice Department concluding that gun control laws are ineffective in reducing gun violence likely will never cross the silky lips of Brian Williams.
An EPA study that failed to link fracking—hydraulic fracturing—with environmental contamination will not see the broadcast big screen.
Coverage of abortion must emphasize that pro-life is extreme and pro-choice is reasonable. You will never hear the network big-hairs try to pin down Democratic politicians on extreme positions or defying public opinion on things like late term abortion, partial birth abortion, parental consent, or many other vulnerabilities of the NARAL Democrats. It’s not in the script.
No, they’ll stalk and bait and quiz pro-life Republicans, eagerly hunting the next gaffe that can go big time.
The cynical, despicable thing about all this is that even though the public knows it’s being played by cosmopolitan liberals, the game still works. Average Americans might not trust the media further than Barack Obama can throw a game-opening pitch, but the networks still set the agenda and control the subject.
Partisans of right and left seek their favored outlets. But the consciousness of the non-political middle is shaped by the legacy media, and the legacy media is a corrupt PR arm for the Democratic Party.
Hi, Kaz. Another good one.
There is no real free media left in the USA. The mainstream media has simply become an arm of the White House Ministry of Propaganda. Were it not for Internet media and from time to time Fox News and talk radio, the American people would be as ignorant of the truth as the citizens of North Korea.
I have been saying this for 5 years now. We shouldn’t be going after Obama. We should be going after his lapdogs. With enough pressure, eventually they will crack.
We need to Alnsky them, big time. Insult them, ridicule them, report crazy stuff about them. Matthews spending time upstate at a goat farm is a good story. Especially when someone from the animal rights council is interviewed and has some concerns. Even more so when they have a kid that will testify.
The President of CBS news? Found in a street walkers bra and panties? Isn’t he related to that guy in the administration? How care trust him?
That’s how wars are won. Relying on the GOPe to do something is like asking Holder to investigate himself.
And that's what's galling the libs.
5.56mm
I hope this goes particularly poorly for Trumka. I really hate that thug.
Don't look for the GOP aristocracy to do anything about Democrat corruption either.
One thing for sure:
Sorry, Comrade, did you think you were going to be exempt? Do you think you are more important than The Party? Not One Step Back, Comrade! Everyone must sacrifice. From each according to his ability to pay to each according to his political power to make them.
...the legacy media is a corrupt PR arm for the Democratic Party.
History will tell the truth. Marxists from Marx onward have both hated and misunderstood history; neither hatred nor misunderstanding, however, nor volumes of fake history, can alter history.
There has to be a more effective way to counter the leftwing MSM.
There is: Ignore them.
I don’t mean simply us Freepers, I mean the whole of the Republican/Libertarian/Conservative movement. And, not simply turning off the TV, I mean the actual politicians stopping giving interviews with them, appearing on their shows, and shunning their every utterance.
There is an effective alternative Media out there, and the Stupid Party needs to figure it out. If they don’t (and they don’t call them Stupid fer nuthin...) then they will continue to push that stone up the hill forever.
Obama’s law has turned into the Non-affordable Care Act. Democrats and Republicans who voted for the Non-affordable Care Act should be proud.
And, for about 5 years now, I have contended that America faces three enemies:
1. Islamist terrorists.
2. Radical socialists.
3. The MSM
And of these three enemies, the most dangerous is the latter. Because, were it not for the media, the other two enemies would've been defeated a decade ago.
At LEAST as far back as the Dubya admin Republicans have been proposing a package of tax breaks, deregulation, HSAs and tort reform.
But they've been successfully painted only as the "party of no."
"In campaign after campaign we have put boots on the ground, gone door-to-door to get out the vote, run phone banks and raised money to secure this vision. Now this vision has come back to haunt us.”
“Time is running out: Congress wrote this law; we voted for you. We have a problem; you need to fix it. The unintended consequences of the ACA are severe. Perverse incentives are already creating nightmare scenarios.”
Obamacare is a convenient fall guy, it turns out, for major corporations wanting to dump their employee and retiree health plans.
I think the GOP took a dive with its presidential nominees in both 2008 and 2012, because they wanted Obamacare. At least, Howell Raines said they'd agreed to a backstairs fix before the 2008 election, in an article he wrote in Conde Nast Portfolio the month before the election.
Howell Raines: Ex-editor-in-chief of The New York Times in the 90's, before he was unhorsed by a fake-journalism scandal.
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